(See also previous entry, Phnom Penh) From Phnom Penh, we de-camped to the countryside, a small town called Dar near the Vietnamese border, to visit John's pepper farm smallholding and to meet his extended family. We hired a car from the ghastly Europcar, whose representative failed to turn up and then kept us hanging around for over an hour while she tried to figure out how to find our reservation and complete the booking. In the end we got a Toyota cruiser type thing, Quashi (sunroof not working). We had to negotiate finding our way back...

Bun ( pron, Boon said quickly) was there at 9am. Went to fishing village then salt plains followed by a sweet coffee & delicious local tea.
Salt fields, then La Plantation pepper). Then a ccave. Great trip for $25 ,
...maybe shiuld'be bartered.
Back to Boot Mountain ( run by in Lincolnshire man) for some Kampot Cider, brewed in Sihanoukville. Envious of the English man.

Woke up a bit jaded wondering how 3 gin & tonics did that to me...a mystery?
Muesli with honey & fruit for brek $3 £2.41 but delicious!
Spent the morning planning. Painful & boring but got a lot done.
Lebanese falafel for lunch .
Wandered round beautiful Kampot looking at the French Architecture.
Took a magical boat trip down the river where you had to duck your head for bridges!
Supposed to be fire-flies but only saw lots of wonderful stars & views, well worth $5 each.
Had a Kampot pepper fish & luk Lak at Book but fish all dried up so...

Lovely send off. Waved to by manageress Mel and the Dalek man insisted on shaking my hand having not spoken to me in 4 days! Trip Advisor springs to mind!
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Half hour very bumpy tuk-tuk ride to 'the roundabout' along with Jorn the Germans backpack as he went on a moped to go via the airport ATM. Moto driver forgot his phone so they went past, back and past our tuc-tuc again.
Luckily they got to the roundabout in time. A stranger there handed Tim his phone which had the bus-driver on the other end saying he'd be 15 minutes.
Bus was...

Travel to the 3rd largest city in Cambodia, Kampong Cham. With lots of free time today why not rent a bike and cruise along the river
exploring the countryside to meet friendly locals or visit the 11th Century Vat Nokor temple. A very traditional Cambodian experience
awaits you in this remarkably rural City. Enjoy an included local dinner tonight.

Our last two days in Phnom Penh have been spent helping CHOICE
(Charitable Humanitarian Organisation in Cambodia by Expats). It was started in 2006 by an Australian man Ross who resolved to help the poorest of the poor. He supports four small villages by providing them with some food and basic necessities once a week and providing them with clean drinking water every second day.
The people in these villages are squatters who have either lost their land or never had any, and who live on the dusty roadside with dirty water canals and rice...

A few more photos and memories to share from our life in Takeo.
From our usual breakfast restaurant, every morning we would watch the saffron robed monks heading out from the pagoda, usually in twos. They are not permitted to eat from sun- up to sunset nor touch women. They come and stand silently in front of a house/business. The occupants come out with either food or money, raise their hands in a prayer gesture and the monks intone a blessing. They are often quite young boys who may be living in the temple for a few years. Obviously...

We never cease to be enthralled by the market and a visit there is never quick! The pictures can't capture the sounds, smells or heat - all added extras. We have been searching for all manner of things and people are so helpful, leaving their shops and escorting us to where they think we might find an item. Care for lotus flowers, weaner pigs, live chickens or ducks, fresh fish (ie still alive and flapping), meat portions including entrails, banana fritters, water balloons, breadfruit, rivets, dental floss - it's an amazing...

Cambodia celebrates Chinese New Year with a long weekend so we decided to head off to Kampot for the weekend. Two other volunteers from NFO joined us - a NZ girl, and a Welsh girl. We "lived it up" for the weekend in a very nice hotel $29 per night including breakfast -very expensive!
We took a mini bus trip one day to visit caves where Hindu shrines are inset into the caves. Next stop was at a pepper plantation where we saw the pepper vines growing and the pepper corns hanging. There are 3 harvests a year when the pepper corn stalks...

It's amazing how quickly you can adapt to new routines and how little you miss things that once you thought were important.
Our alarm goes off at 7 am, though mostly we are awake before this, and we jump on our bikes for a one kilometer ride towards town. We share the road with a few cars, trucks, vans, LOTS of motorbikes and LOTS of bicycles. It is right hand drive in Cambodia but road rules seem to be optional!
We have our favorite restaurant where each morning we have pee bou moeun, num bang and Khmer coffee (2 eggs with bread -...

We are settling into our life here in Takeo..and enjoying every day with new sights and experiences.
NFO orphanage (New Futures Organisation) is run by Neville (an Englishman). NFO also has a guest house about 2 km from the orphanage where volunteers can stay. We stayed there initially but found the little room very hot at night so have moved to another guest house with a bigger room - fan, cold water for US$7 per night. Neville arrived in Takeo as a volunteer about 4 years ago to assist at the orphanage, but detected that the manager...

We have had a whirlwind four days of visiting primary schools with Denise Arnold (Cambodia Trust, Tauranga), each night returning to a guest house in Kampot. 17 of us travelled in 2 vans, including two translators who administer the Trust here. At each school, Denise (and the rest of us) were warmly welcomed. We all helped distribute school uniforms to some of the children and books and pens to others. How delighted they were with their new books!
Denise also had a meeting with the school Director (Principal) and teachers to ask them...